BERALMAR participated at the most important construction fair in north Africa, the BATIMATEC fair, held annually in Algiers (Algeria), between 3 and 7 May.

BATIMATEC did not disappoint and again was a good platform for keeping in contact with the Algerian – and not just Algerian – ceramics industry, in spite of the regular contact BERALMAR already has with ceramics companies in the country, and for sound out the sector: its forecasts, concerns and needs.

This year BERALMAR put the new BRIQUETERIE AMRAOUA plant at Tizi Ouzou, near Algiers into operation and is due to commission another ceramics plant in Adrar, in the south of the country.

As usual over recent years, BERALMAR participated actively in the KERAMTEX conference organised by the Russian association of ceramics companies, held this year on 28 May in the city of Kazan, the capital of the Republic of Tatarstan.

Kazan is an ancient city, considered to be Russia’s third capital. With its rich history, Kazan is now a modern, multi-ethnic, multi-lingual, multi-religion metropolis, as well as being one of Russia’s most prosperous cities thanks to the banking sector, industrial diversification and a concentration of IT companies.

During the conference, BERALMAR’s Oleg Polchiy gave a presentation on projects for modernising existing plants to optimise production, quality and energy consumption.

BERALMAR is currently finishing the work on a complete new plant for 30 million perforated and bevelled clinker bricks per year in Novocheboksarsk, just 150 km from Kazan.

A new meeting of the ECTS, the working group that brings together the majority of European ceramics technology suppliers, took place on 21 and 22 May. This time it was held in the head offices of CERATEC in Ploegsteert (Belgium) and BERALMAR took part as usual.

A variety of matters were covered during the meeting, among which the discussion on the recent successful symposium on ceramics technology the ECTS organised in Turkey in April, at the initiative of the ECTS member company AR-SAN MAKINA, is worth highlighting.

As is customary, away from the formality of the meeting, the participants took the chance to get to look around the company CERATEC, as well as to visit the historic Flemish city of Ypres, sadly famous as the centre of one of the bloodiest battles of the First World War, inspiring the poem "In Flanders Fields". The meeting also included the usual – and ever more lively – association dinner.

We would like to record our thanks here to our colleagues at CERATEC for their impeccable organisation and hospitality. The next ECTS meeting will take place in October in Munich (Germany), taking advantage of the presence of group members at the CERAMITEC trade fair.

This is for the PROCERAN ceramics company of Aguilar de la Frontera (Cordova, Spain), part of the important ceramics group GRUPO DÍAZ REDONDO, specialising in the manufacture of high quality light-weight clay blocks.

In this case, PROCERAN has ordered a MICROMATIC installation to replace the majority of its natural gas consumption with micronized pet coke.

Taking fuel costs and the currently available firing technologies into account, continuing to fire structural formats that once installed will never be seen again solely with gas is an absurd, unjustifiable cost, regardless of whether or not the price of the end product covers the energy cost.

This is why this is the fifty-ninth solid fuel (basically micronized pet coke) firing installation BERALMAR will have supplied to the Spanish market since 2000. If the savings all those installations have generated for the whole Spanish ceramics industry over the period could be calculated, it would surely be a very impressive figure.

We thank PROCERAN for the trust they have placed in BERALMAR in this case.